Generally, refrigerators are used to store foods in a storage space closed by a refrigerator door at a low temperature. For this, air cooled through heat exchange with a refrigerant in refrigeration cycles is used to cool the storage space for keeping foods stored in the storage space at an optimal state.
With changes in eating habits and advances in technology, large and multifunctional refrigerators have been introduced, and various structures and convenient devices have been included in the refrigerators for the convenience of customers.
Such a refrigerator includes at least one storage space. For example, a refrigerator may include a plurality of storage spaces such as a freezer compartment and a refrigerator compartment. The freezer compartment and refrigerator compartment are configured to be closed and opened by doors.
Rotatable or slidable doors are widely used as refrigerator doors. Generally, in a bottom freezer type refrigerator in which a freezer compartment is located under a refrigerator compartment, a forward/backward sliding door is used to close and open the lower freezer compartment, and a basket used to store foods is configured to be slid forward/backward together with the sliding door. For this, rail assemblies are provided on both sides of a storage space of the refrigerator for supporting the door and the basket and allowing sliding of the door and the basket.
The door and the basket have a relatively large transverse width to cover the opened front side of the freezer compartment, and the weights of the door and the basket are relatively great. Therefore, when the door is moved in/out, the door and the basket undesirably swing left and right.
For this reason, racks and pinions are included in the rail assemblies so that when the rail assemblies are slid in/out for closing and opening the door, the pinions move along the racks to prevent swinging motions of the door.
Structures for aligning the teeth of a pinion and a rack when a door is initially assembled or slid in/out are disclosed in Korean Patent Nos. 10-0634361 and 10-0659664, and Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2007-0008046.
In the disclosed Patents, a structure is provided at a side of a rack for aligning a pinion and properly coupling the pinion with a rack when a door is initially assembled. However, when the door is initially assembled or retracted after being maximally extended, an excessive force can be applied to one of both sides of the door, or the rack and pinion can be misaligned due to improper handling of the door.
Therefore, in this case, although the door is completely retracted, one side of the door is not completely in contact with a frame of a freezer compartment, and thus cooling air is dissipated through a gap between the door and the frame of the freezer compartment.